CSHP MEMORIAL PUBLIC SCHOOL

PRACTICE SHEET (NOTES MAKING) (2022-23)

CLASS XI ENGLISH -301
PASSAGE 1

Sixty years after independence, the caste question looms large in our consciousness. Far
from being abolished, the caste system is at the centre of many debates of the day. Whether it
is the larger question of the importance of caste in electoral politics, reservations, whether
caste should be part of the census or not or the outrage over the Khap panchayat’s actions, it
is clear that caste is an arena of contention even today.
There is a part of India which sees caste as an outdated institution that needs to be erased
from all our calculations. It sees caste as a blight on modernity, a pathogen that infects us.
Caste binds us to a collective rooted in the past and imposes on individuals a destiny that is
not of their making. Caste hierarchy makes our future contingent on our birth, and those less
fortunately born are condemned to a life more ordinary. What makes this more complex is the
accelerated attempt to reverse history by the device of reservations which allocate
opportunities purposively to the lower castes. This makes the distaste for caste even greater
in the educated middle class, who see it as an instrument created for use specifically against
them. The advantages that have accrued to this group have been internalised and neutralised
and only the disadvantages loom threateningly, particularly 1 as the lower castes accumulate
political power.
It is interesting that the distaste for caste and its classification as a social evil has such wide
currency. If the underlying purpose, that of ensuring that birth does not determine destiny,
and that the individual must begin with a clean slate in building one’s life, were indeed that
important, then the idea of inheriting property should be seen as being equally unfair. After all,
in today’s world, nothing determines our life’s trajectory as much as money. The fact that
opponents of caste-based reservations are open to using economic criteria suggests that
even they accept the unfairness of birth-determined wealth. Why is caste such an
anachronism and inheritance such a modem idea?
The idea is made to seem natural in the myth that markets create that everyone can aspire to
becoming wealthy, and uses as its poster children, the lucky few who have built empires from
scratch. We can admire them, but to argue that because some people are able to overcome
constraints imposed on them by circumstances, no attempt should be made to level the
playing field is not an argument that stands up to scrutiny. It would then seem that our
distaste for the past is selective. The class that protests caste but . celebrates inheritance is
the one that has nothing left to gain from caste and everything to lose if property rights are
reformed. Of course, the larger market discourse makes this selective discrimination seem
legitimate and modem.

Questions:
1. On the basis of your reading make notes on the above passage. 5
2. Write the summary of the passage in your own words. 3
 CSHP MEMORIAL PUBLIC SCHOOL
ASSIGNMENT SHEET (NOTES MAKING) (2022-23)
CLASS XI ENGLISH -301

PASSAGE 2

An era, a culture is eventually determined by its news. What is missed out by those who track
the news of that time is lost forever. We know nothing about Shakespeare’s contemporaries
even though some of them may have been better playwrights. We know nothing about those
who came in with Babar, or around the same time, to loot India and stayed back as rulers. Or
the many soldiers of fortune who landed here during the time of the East India Company. We
know of a few and, apart from avid historians, no one knows who led the Portuguese, Dutch or
French into India or ran their empires here till they were dismantled. Why is that? Simple. The
media of that time, known as historians, did not mention them.
We who consume news today see it as a fleeting experience. We observe a powerful image on
TV, are moved by its impact or repelled by its horror, and move on. We read a headline today
and can’t even recall it tomorrow. Current news always drives out the old (often with ruthless
cunning) and It’s only when the media goes back in time to recall a particular (7 story that we
suddenly remember that, yes, there was something called HDW or Bofors that once shook up
the entire nation and held it in thrall for a decade. We are suddenly reminded that Congress
treasurer LN Mishra was mysteriously killed in a bomb blast on
a train and no one ever knew who killed him or where his secret millions vanished.
Since I’m a journalist I can tell you many such stories. There are others too, full of stories.
But, like news, the stories die with them. History only remembers what it chooses to, or what
is indelibly stamped on its pages. The rest is occasionally recalled as gossip. But is it gossip?
Or is it truth that we are trying to forget so that we can move on and make space in our hearts
and minds for more recent news? Our memory, collective as well as individual, has limited
storage and however many data cards we may insert, there’s simply too much to absorb and
retain. The information surge that hits us every morning is so i large, so intimidating that we
remember only a tiny fraction of it. It’s that fraction which actually scares us by the possibility
of impacting our lives.
The gap between news and entertainment was always sacrosanct. News was about facts.
Entertainment was about imagination, ergo fiction. To see them occupy the same media
platforms today is scary for those like me who have spent a lifetime pursuing facts in the
search for news. Even the dividing line has blurred. What we once shunned as preposterous
lies slip in so casually today into our news menu. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just that the fault lines
have shifted. News has become just another consumable, another platform to commercially
(and cynically) exploit. No, don’t blame our journalists and media owners. They are only
following a global model that, for better or for worse, is making our times an entirely
forgettable chapter of history.

Questions:
1. On the basis of your reading make notes on the above passage. 5
2. Write the summary of the passage in your own words. 3